28 November 2010

Future plansAt the moment I will look at getting a GTX570 to see how they go. If the GTX570 seems to be reasonable (price/performance) then I will look at one for each of the i7's except Maul. They will replace whatever each one has (2 x GTX295, 1 x GTX275 and 1 x GTX460). The GTX460 will get put into one of the quaddies.

Project news - GPUgridThey have updated their science application program to cuda 3.1. However it crashes on my machines with multi-gpu cards (ie Kirk and Sulu). They both have GTX295's installed. I have ceased running GPUgrid on them for the time being. I suspect this is caused by a bug in cuda 3.1 where it gets confused as to which device is running the app. They are in the process of creating a cuda 3.2 app so this may resolve the issue, but its not ready yet.

They are also seeking donations so they can get a GTX580. They are available from their supplier (in Spain) from the 1st of December. I made a donation to help them get one.

Project news - SetiWell their two new servers are in. One has been fired up as the BOINC database server and the other is set to become the science database server. They are expecting to copy the science database over to the new machine next week.

WeatherIts been fairly warm and humid most of the week. As a result all the machine have been switched off during the day. This of course means not much work is getting done at the moment.

Add to this some ClimatePrediction work that takes 250 hours a work unit and it makes things a bit more complicated. I have been favouring the machines with CPDN tasks to try and get them all finished.

20 November 2010

Cuda 3.2 releasedNvidia finally released the cuda 3.2 toolkit. Its been in release candidate mode for a while. Now its available to the public.

The Seti optimisers have created a test app to try some different algorithms using the cuda 3.2 toolkit. As I have a few different types of graphics cards I ran it on all of them and reported the results. Hopefully this will lead to further optimisation of the science apps.

GPUgrid switching to cuda 3.2The GPUgrid guys are also in the process of getting apps compiled using the cuda 3.2 toolkit. At the moment their cuda 3.1 app fails on my GTX295 rigs. I suspect this is the cuda bug where it gets confused as to which device is running the app, as it works fine on the single gpu machines. That means I can only run GPUgrid work on Spock (GTX460) and Chekov (GTX275) for the time being.

GTX570No its not out yet. Supposedly coming in December. Its reportedly 480 cuda cores and based on the GF110 chip, which the GTX580 uses. Should be good for crunching if the price is right. I will look at getting one once the hype of a new release dies down and stock becomes readily available.

Maul HDD upgradeI replaced the hard disk in Maul today. Not a big deal to install it, but rather the hassle of reinstalling Windows 7 the way I had it. Anyway its all done, so its got a little bit more disk space now. The old disk was a 320Gb and the new one has 500Gb, however I don't use much disk space on the crunchers.

Seti servers arrivedThe 2 machines that we did the fund raisers for have arrived. They have got 1 up and running as a replica database and will see how it runs for the next couple of days. I also did a top-up donation so that they can get some additional hard disks.

13 November 2010

MilestonesNone reached. Things have been rather slow as most of the machines are off. What little crunching is taking place is on Einstein and ClimatePrediction as they have longish deadlines.

BOINC testingWe got up to 6.12.6 this week. They made a few changes to job scheduling in 6.12.5 around multi-threaded apps (MT). They have refined it a bit with this latest one. I've got it installed on Maul at the moment. Its working fine, but then I don't run MT apps.

GTX580 releasedWell Nvidia released the GTX580. Its got 512 shaders (what the GTX480 was supposed to have) and runs somewhat cooler. They cost $680 (AUD) at the moment, so I won't be buying one anytime soon.

WeatherIt turned hot this last week, so all the machines have been off during the day, with one or two running overnight.

Last week we had a thunderstorm blowing rain in through the loft window. It was only open 2 inches and its in the roof line (ie it slopes down at 35 degrees) so the rain was blowing up and in. The two computers close to the window were getting water on them before I got the window closed. I then had to shut them all off because of the heat.